Aj and Mig walked down the tunnel in complete silence, they’d been walking this way for over an hour now and both of them were surprised they were still alive. They were freezing and in great pain from their multiple wounds, but alive. The only thing of note they’d encountered so far was another similar open cavern covered in the same light-blue snow. Among the snow, they saw what looked like frozen purple ichor and pieces of leftover grub shells. The two of them surmised that the mantises must have hunted the grubs here before moving further down the tunnel and ambushing them later. They hoped that was the truth at least. The thought of another group of mantises stalking them made them shiver more than they already were. The two of them quickly left the scarred cavern behind, leaving through a single tunnel opposite of where they entered.
Aj had hoped that they would find an offshooting tunnel or maybe some open air soon. The thought of traveling along the same route that the ambushing mantises came from made him anxious. He wasn’t sure that they’d survive a run in with a single mantis in their shape, let alone a group of them. If they encountered something Aj knew what he’d do,,, he’d trust Mig to take care of it. After all without Kit, he was basically unarmed and he hadn't heard a peep from him over the last hour. If Mig couldn’t handle it then he’d give his best shot at jumping towards it and trying to repeat what he and Kit had done to the mantis. The thought didn’t give him much confidence.
“Hold up” Mig whispered backwards, his head still facing forwards. Aj listened and instantly stopped in his tracks, focusing hard to see if he could hear or see what made Mig stop.
“Hoaugh” Kit suddenly yawned mentally to Aj. Aj jumped in response, causing Mig to look backward.
“You notice something? They coming?!” Mig asked in a worried whisper to Aj. There was too much going on in the moment for Aj to respond, so he shook his head no and waved his hands trying to signify that he hadn’t seen anything. Mig turned around seeming confused.
“What’s going on, what'd I miss?” Kit asked Aj
“Our way back to Rojasroc was blocked off, our only option is to go deeper into this underworld and find a way back,” Aj responded mentally while watching Mig for any sign of action. “We’re also currently traveling the way those mantises came down and Mig just suddenly stopped in front of me and then you scared the shit out of me by yawning”
“Sorry, I didn’t know what was going on. I’ve never been that tired before. Not even after our run in with that shadow guy” Kit replied. Aj could tell from his voice that he was feeling guilty.
“It’s okay man, things have been a little tight since you’ve been sleeping. That’s never happened to you before right?”
“No, I may have taken a nap every now and then but I could’ve gone days without sleeping. I think that using my abilities through you really tuckered me out”
“It felt wild man, maybe we should have practiced that bef-” Aj was cut off as Mig raised his hand in a fist and crouched to the corner of the tunnel. Aj tried to mimic him and crouched down to the side, his thighs burning as he crouched. It only took him a few seconds to hear the tell-tell sounds of a series of short scrapes on the hard ground. It was dark in the tunnel but Aj could barely make out a moving shape.
“Definitely a mantis, might be one or two” Kit said mentally. Mig loosened his sword from his sheath and had it at the ready.
“What are we doing?” Kit asked Aj.
“We’re waiting,” Aj responded.
“Let me out man, I’ll take care of this” Kit said eagerly
“If it comes to it man maybe, but that should be our last option. We should wait and see if Mi-”
“I can do this, Aj” Kit said very seriously. Aj was surprised at his intensity.
“I know you can, Kit but that should be reserved as our last option” Aj replied. He didn’t hear a response from Kit but he felt a wave of displeasure from him. He wasn’t quite sure why. He actually felt really relieved that Kit was back and ready for action, and if the only option to save their lives was to let Kit out and go rampage he would, but they weren’t there yet. It was odd to him that Kit wasn’t seeing that in the moment, usually he was the more strategic one. Aj had to put his thoughts to the side though as the creature came closer.
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The creature got closer and closer down the tunnel. As it got closer it gave no indication that it had spotted the two of them. They waited, Aj trying desperately to hold his breath. The creature got within 5 feet of Mig and he struck. Exploding upwards off the side of the wall and putting his entire momentum into his strike. Mig felt his palms grow numb as the cor left his hands and returned to his heart. There was a sickening slock as the head of the creature hit the floor, Mig jumped backwards preparing himself for the corpse’s attacks which never came. The corpse simply fell to the ground. Relief flooded Aj and Mig as the quick combat came to an end and silence pervaded the tunnel.
“Thoughts on harvesting it or moving on?” Mig asked, his tone conveying urgency.
“I can do it real quick, light the torch and be on lookout” Aj replied. Mig nodded and lit his torch revealing the corpse of the mantis creature and illuminating the icy tunnel.
“Weird,” Aj said. The corpse of the mantis was different than the ones they’d faced before. It was a foot shorter in height and instead of the four-bladed arms, it had two long spindly arms with multiple joints. Its back was covered in two rows of dark blue spikes a foot long each. The spikes bent towards the center of the creature's back, entangling themselves with spikes from the side, creating rough baskets. Speared inside those baskets were chunks of grub meat and some other furry meat that Aj didn’t recognize.
“Must be from a different caste” Kit said mentally. “Something that cleans up after the hunters”. Aj had to agree, based on its performance it went down a hell of a lot easier than the hunter mantises and he was thankful for that. He contemplated pointing out the difference to Mig, but he looked fully encrypted in looking out and decided to bring it up later. Tentatively Aj began harvesting the creature by shoving his hand down the creature’s now open neck hole. The creature's anatomy was mostly significantly different than the hunter’s but after thirty seconds sloping around in the creature's chest, Aj found its heart shard and pulled. The fruit of his hard labor was a heartshard, that looked a little smaller than the others to Aj. Not wanting to dwell on it, Aj looked up towards Mig.
“We’re ready,” Aj said. Mig nodded and capped his torch, shutting off the light. But not before Aj noticed something strange down the hallway, back behind Mig’s head.
“Wait,” Aj said. “I think I saw something up on the wall up ahead”
The two of them walked down the tunnel keeping the light off until reaching where Aj had noticed something strange. Mig relit the torch and illuminated what looked like a cold metal vent set five feet high into the wall. It was about four feet wide so the mantises could maybe chase them in, but at least it was a little bit off the beaten path. This could be the one spot they’ve found that they could actually rest.
Then Mig put the torch closer and Aj saw the engravings and clear scratch marks on the metal surface. Aj didn’t say it out loud, but he was screaming “FUCK” in his head. They’d never find a place safe from the mantises. He felt so tired in that moment, he felt the corner of his eyes sting as he held back from crying.
“It’s a Predecessor Stronghold,” Mig said bewilderedly staring at the engravings.
“What the hell does that mean?” Aj asked. Hoping that Mig’s tone meant this could be their salvation.
“It means this could be a gold mine!” Mig answered excitedly quiet “It means that maybe Trace’s group picked the wrong way after all. If we can pull this all together we might have first rights” Mig finished smiling. To Aj, it looked like he was staring at somewhere far past these icy walls. Somewhere happy.
“I’m gonna be honest and admit my ignorance this time before it lands us in trouble, I have no idea what the fuck we’re talking about. Is this route safer? Can we even survive it if we enter in our state?” Mig asked, getting straight to the point.
“I don’t know” Mig answered honestly “Trace said they were difficult, but that the kind of difficulty depended on which generation they were.”
“Kit any idea what a Predecessor Stronghold is?” Aj asked mentally
“Ohh ummm” Kit said, dragging on. “I’m sorry Aj what did you ask?” Kit asked, sounding genuinely lost.
“Dude, are you OK?” Aj asked, he was starting to get genuinely concerned. This wasn’t like Kit. He could have a low attention span, but not when something this important and interesting was happening.
“I’m good, I’m good” Kit replied, in a way that did nothing to convince Aj that he was in fact good.
“What’s a Predecessor Stronghold?” Aj asked out loud Mig, giving up on asking Kit.
“Man, you really haven’t heard much then,” Mig said with only a slight tinge of judgment. “Think of Predecessors as the dominant species in the underworlds before humans. They had extreme understandings of cor and the underworlds and put up strongholds or “dungeons” throughout the underworlds. Trace says that only the young and stupid like to call them dungeons.” Mig took a small break in his explanation and smiled before continuing.
“There are three different generations and they all exceeded in different aspects and had different tastes for defenses of their strongholds. But finding an undiscovered stronghold is like finding a treasure chest. It could set my family for life.” Mig finished
“So what generation or whatever stronghold is this?” Aj asked.
“Yeahhhhh, I don’t know,” Mig said, drawing it awkwardly. “ I can recognize the markings, but I don’t know enough to know what generation it is. Trace never taught me that far.”
“Great,” Aj said deadpanned.